Homecoming
by silverfingers
Summary: One shot, post Lost Colony. Right after seeing Butler, Artemis returns to Fowl Manor. But it's been a long time...what kind of welcome should he expect? It won't be a totally smooth reentry.


Come on, I _had_ to do one. I actually wrote this like a week after Lost Colony came out. Enjoy!

Random Quote of the Day: "Saying there appears to be some clotting is like saying there's a traffic jam ahead. Is it a ten-car pile up, or just a really slow bus in the center lane? And if it is a bus, is that bus thrombotic or embolic? I think I pushed the metaphor too far."  
-Dr. House, _House, M.D._

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Artemis let himself into the manor. The lights were on, but outside the windows it was dark on the grounds. Butler was still on the coast. He had sensed that Artemis's reunion with his parents should be something private, so he'd given the boy a last bone-cracking hug and put him on a commercial flight, promising to come the next day. Butler did mean to stay retired, but there was no reason why he shouldn't move a little closer to the Fowls.

Artemis conducted a quick look-around. His parents weren't home. A faint frown line appeared in the boy's forehead. This was anticlimactic.

_Twins…_

He couldn't resist. While he waited to surprise his parents he had to see if his siblings were real. He knew exactly where they'd sleep-in his old nursery. Softly, Artemis climbed the stairs to the third floor. Only a few lights were on inside the huge house. The door off the landing led to the nursery, but he'd have to go through his computer lab. Out of habit, his footsteps barely made a sound as he turned towards it. He wouldn't have done that if he'd been thinking about it. Juliet was not someone you wanted to catch you sneaking around a house if she wasn't expecting you.

"_Grab some ceiling, perv!"_

…Then again, Butler had never said Juliet was there. The angry person behind him definitely didn't have her voice. Artemis felt something sharp prick the back of his neck. Cautiously, he raised his hands, laced them behind his head, and sighed. Why did this keep happening to him? He had a feeling whoever his parents had hired wouldn't be as glad to see him as Butler had been.

"This is really inconvenient. I had homework to do tonight and now I've got to detain _you_." Artemis got a jolt. A young person was accosting him, but it wasn't Juliet as he had been expecting. He chose his words carefully.

"Do I look like I am capable of kidnapping?" The honest answer to that was _yes,_ but not unless you asked someone who knew Artemis when he was twelve.

"What? A guy heading straight for the babies' room? You're a bit young to be a kidnapper, but I guess you thought that would throw me. I could give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're just here to steal stuff-"

"Ridiculous. I built this security system myself. It is impossible to simply break in."

That was the wrong thing to say, as evidenced by the knife digging in harder. He hoped his shirt wouldn't get ruined, then remembered it was covered in volcanic ash anyways.

"Wrong. Now you've made me _really_ mad. The last thing those people need reminding of tonight is _that_. Everybody knows who built the system." Silence, suddenly. His menacer had had a brainwave. "You don't know anything about him, do you?"

Artemis's arms were hurting from holding them up and were fueling his growing annoyance with this whole situation. "Him who?"

"The Fowl's firstborn kid, Artemis."

Artemis was silent for a moment. "May I turn around?" There was another pause as the knife-wielder thought, nodded, and remembered he couldn't see her nodding.

"Okay. Keep the hands where I can see them," she said aloud. Artemis turned, looking his accoster looked in the face for the first time. She turned out to be a girl in a sweatshirt and jeans with dusty, almost grayish black hair and dark eyes.

Blue-black eyes….familiar ones….

"You're a Butler," pronounced Artemis, figuring it out. Her mouth had fallen open slightly.

"You look….you look just like him." Her face suddenly hardened again into a suspicious scowl.

"I know what you are." Artemis got the feeling that whatever this girl thought he was was worse than a slug. Something in her repulsed glare. "It's a good job, though. You really do look just like him."

"What?"

She leaned closer, trying to find a flaw in the disguise, because there had to be one. This couldn't really be the long-lost Fowl.

"Yes, a good fake. You obviously found a good surgeon. But Artemis Fowl had two blue eyes." Prod in the chest with the knife.

"How on Earth do you know what my eye color is? I've never met you. This is a contact lens."

"Take it out then."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"Because it isn't a contact lens."

She looked at him oddly. "Don't play games with me, sicko. And anyways, he'd be about eighteen-"

"Didn't Butler always say I'd come back?" She finally shut up for a second. Obviously, Butler had. She sighed, opened her mouth, shut it and frowned. Artemis could see her mind trying to reconcile the fact that it was clearly him with the obvious disparities in his appearance. Her subconscious had probably accepted it already, but the rational part of her mind-ha, if there was one-was still fighting.

"You want to know why I'm not lightening up? Step backwards and open the door behind you. One hand only!" she growled. Artemis did so, backing into what had been his lab. It was dark and only one of the computers was running. It was throwing images from the CNN site against the wall. Artemis stopped breathing. The Butler girl flicked on the light switch.

"Look to your left." Artemis turned his head. There had been some renovations to his lab. Framed pictures ran the length of the wall. Some teak shelving, glaringly out-of-place in this room of plastic and silicon, ran along the other walls and were equally covered in photos. He sucked in his breath.

Artemis with his first chess set. Artemis lecturing at Trinity. Artemis looking at the Mona Lisa on his very first trip to France, before his father had been kidnapped. Artemis frowning at the screen of a Mac, Artemis smiling awkwardly at the camera, Artemis as a five-year-old reading the _Wall Street Journal_ with his feet dangling off the edge of the couch. Artemis newborn with a years-younger Butler looking at him suspiciously. Artemis in a hospital waiting room, bored, flipping through a magazine. Artemis at the genetics symposium, looking very happy. Artemis adjusting his father's leg with a tiny screwdriver. That one was quite recent.

The Butler girl saw the intruder's mismatched eyes get huge. She rapped the nearest picture-Artemis asleep at a computer-with her knife.

"_That_ was Artemis Fowl. He disappeared three years ago. This family has been through the worst thing they could possibly experience, which also totally destroyed the kid's old bodyguard, and we've had more weirdoes claiming to be him in the past three years than you can count, which is really sad but it's what happens when you're millionaires who've lost a son as you well know, you creep. Now you show up and the last thing these people need is more heartbreak because Mrs. Fowl comes in here once a week and **cries**. If you have a single shred of human decency you will leave this house _now._ "

An unexpected flicker of anger in the boy's eyes.

"People have been pretending to be me?"

"People _like_ you have been pretending to be the person you are pretending to be."

"Listen to me, you deranged Butler," said Artemis. "I am Artemis Fowl."

"You'd like to believe that, wouldn't you. What's the-"

"Butler's first name is Domovoi," started Artemis abruptly. She stared at him. "He was my bodyguard since the minute I was born," Artemis went on. "This was my lab. I ran that exact same site every day when my father disappeared. I've been gone for three years, two months and eleven days. I did have two blue eyes but I was forced to change that. I gave my mother that necklace of hers on one the anniversaries of my father's disappearance. It matches his eyes and until recently, mine. The density of aluminum is 2.7 grams per milliliter."

He could just _mesmerize _her. But Artemis didn't want to do that. Anyways, he wasn't even sure he could mesmerize.

"Junior? We're home." He heard the main door open. It was his mother. She sounded exhausted, drained. Usually after a night out with his father she was almost giddy when she came home, tired but happy and able to stay up for another hour just talking.

"Who's Junior?" Artemis asked the girl.

"That's me. Don't even think about talking to them. That poor woman doesn't need an increase in her pain today. Just shut up and I'll let you go."

"Trust me on this one, Jun-Miss Butler. I am Artemis Fowl. Is it so impossible I'm not dead?"

She looked at him.

"Junior? We said we're home. Thanks for watching the babies, but we're home now." A pause. "_We're home!_ Junior?"

"Mother," called Artemis, ignoring the girl's death glare. Things went silent.

"_What did you say, Junior?_"

He backed out onto the landing where his parents could look up and see him from the entrance hall, hands up. Junior followed him, knife at his throat. It was the same set of stairs his mother had descended the day Holly gave her her mind back.

"Have it your way. I'm going to gut you when this is over."

"No, you're not," he whispered back. "Watch this." Artemis turned his head and looked down at his parents.

"Mother, who gave this psychopath a weapon?" His father and mother stopped, stunned. Angeline's eyes started to water, but she nevertheless began to climb the stairs towards him in a determined way.

"Angie-" his father started, not taking his eyes off Artemis.

"I'll deal with this one, Timmy. Junior, you can put that down. For the moment. Young man," she started, not meeting his eyes, "I don't know who you are, but if you were my son, you'd be older by now."

"Butler must have explained some of that to you."

"I think _you_ should explain it to me. If you're my son, you'll be able to do it easily." Artemis paused, then jerked his head at Junior.

"Send her home first."

"I can't."

"Moth-"

"_Don't call me that!" _Angeline yelled suddenly. "She lives here." Artemis's eye twitched.

"Very well then. I would prefer her not hear this."

"I'll humor you, but only because you've obviously found a good plastic surgeon. Go to your room please, Junior," said Mrs. Fowl, not taking her eyes off her son.

"I don't-"

"Junior," echoed Mr. Fowl.

"Going." She left. Artemis watched her until she was out of sight, then turned back to face his parents.

"Mother, Father, you have to understand. It's been three years but for me it's only been a day. Less than a day, even: a few hours. Highly unpleasant hours, actually."

His mother was looking at him, her eyes shining wet. He hated putting her through this. Time froze…

But eventually she shook her head. "No. No," she repeated, a little more firmly. "I won't put myself through this again. I don't know who you are, but for the last time you're-"

"Not your little Arty?" She jerked her head up and met the full force of her son's gaze. Artemis Senior laid a hand on his wife's shoulder, not taking his eyes off the trespasser with the mismatched eyes who looked so much like his son. "That's what you used to tell me," Artemis said to Angeline. "When Father was gone. You went insane and stayed in the attic. I used to come visit you. Some days you would recognize me, but some days you would tell me that you didn't know who I was, but" he took a breath, "I wasn't your little Arty."

A baby's wail broke the silence.

"Is that… my sister?"

Angeline shook her head. "No," she said in a whisper. "That's not your sister."

Artemis was crestfallen. She still didn't believe it was him. He looked at his father. Artemis Senior shook his head in agreement with his wife. This wasn't how it was supposed to go at all. For a wild second Artemis wondered if he should just leave. Give them some time. After all, it had to be a shock. Then…

"That's your brother, Arty boy," said Timmy gruffly as Artemis's mother burst into tears and pulled him into a hug.

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"Welcome home, Artemis," whispered a nonplussed Junior as she watched the security screens.

Yeah, yeah, I know: I always do OCs. But still, I quite like this one. What do you think? Review!!

The floor is lava,  
Silverfingers.


End file.
